Big theme for 2015 is Combiners, and is confirmed to be 100% Scramble City. It's also confirmed to be unrelated to the Fall of Cybertron Bruticus gimmick (yesss). Superion will be the first released, with each team more or less corresponding around the same wave and IDW will create additional pack-in comics to explain their origin. IDW released a preview image by Livio showing Superion and Menasor.

Click on the pictures just to look at the toys, yeah? Not all of the individual members are seen, as far as I can tell they only showed the ones from deluxe wave 1 and the two team leaders.

Deluxe wave 1 includes Firefly (new name for Fireflight), Skydive, Dragstrip and Alpha Bravo (new name for Slingshot)
Deluxe wave 2 includes Air Raid, Dead End, Breakdown and Offroad (new name for Wildrider)
Voyager wave 1 includes Silverbolt and Optimus Prime (the one we saw before who is apparently combiner compatible to some degree)
Voyager wave 2 includes Motormaster (no longer Motorhead!)

Legends wave 1 will include Powerglide (who is compatible as a gun for Superion), Thundercracker, Windcharger (repaint of Tailgate) and Bombshell (no longer Hardshell!). We saw most of these guys at Botcon without partners, and it seems like they won't be having them.

We've heard about Robots in Disgsuise before, the next cartoon. It's set in the same continuity with TF: Prime and has a good chunk of the original creative team, but not directly taking place after that series. Bumblebee and Optimus Prime are confirmed to return, and the rest of the Prime cast may make an appearance if the show is renewed for a second season. The show is a hybrid between Animated and Prime aesthetically.

Among other confirmed characters are Sideswipe (he's red and he's got arm blades), Fixit (who has wheels instead of feet and a boxy head) and Strongarm (female Autobot police car who's the team rookie), Underbite (Decepticon dinosaur that turns into a car) plus the Dinobots are confirmed, but not a lot have been revealed yet. There's also a bunch of new human cast of course. Confirmed voice actors include Will Friedle (returning as Bumblebee), Mitchell Whitfield (Fixit), Darren Criss (Sideswipe), Constance Zimmer and Ted McGinley.

Line will apparently be split a la Age of Extinction. The toyline preview includes One-Step Changers Sideswipe and Underbite, Deluxe Class Bumblebee, Legion/Legends Class Optimus PRime and Strongarm.

Seems to be just a store exclusive: one set contains ROTF Blazemaster as Blades and Universe Grapple as Hot Spot, the other contains Prime Ratchet as First Aid, Prime Prowl as Streetwise and Prime Legends Arcee as Groove.

What you don't expect from these Protectobots is that they seem to homage the obscure Guard City team. Hot Spot at least has Fire Chief's colour, and the rest are reasonably similar to Fly-Up, Streetstar and motorcycle-dude-who-I-forgot Sparkride. Safety's all wrong though. I blame Zigzagger for the fact that I know what these guys look like.

Other Stuff:
From the various Seibertron/TFW2005/Allspar threads, they had a trailer for Angry Birds Transformers, new Kre-O you can transform without taking apart, Platinum Edition Grimlock/Prime 2-packs exclusive to K-Mart, Masterpiece Grimlock exclusive to TRU and G1 colors Slog as an Amazon exclusive.

Well, as someone who has giant third party versions of both those teams, I feel compelled to answer the question of whether or not I regret my purchase in light of official Hasbro versions. The answer is no, no I do not regret them.

But these look like fair fun as individual robots... maybe. Can we have Seacons now?

Looking at the Menasor pics, I'm pretty certain that Motormaster is a repaint/remold of that Optimus (or t'other way round). Which would explain why Prime looked like he had combiner gimmickry. EDIT: Ok, reporting confirms that. Guess I should have read more before commenting.

I don't think they look awful, but I'm pretty sure the posing in those display cases isn't helping thing. Menasor's hips and legs look really funky with how he's standing there.
I think my interest is somewhat contingent on the existence of giftsets. I really don't want the Energon problem of putting together half a set and then never seeing the rest.

I'm a little perplexed by the Legends stuff. I mean Powerglide being a gun for Superion, Blackjack being Menasor's chest plate. Seems like and extra level of pain in the ass for completing the combiners. Superion would be fairly ok without a gun, but I have a feeling Menasor is gonna look funky without the chest plate. Wait and see for more info, I suppose.

And I got all excited when my eye caught the word "Protectobots" in the header of some thread over at TFW. Then I got sad when I realized that they were just dumb ol' repaints

Still, the nods to Fire Chief and Fly-Up... how odd. So far out from the left field, that is. I can appreciate the reference in spite of my disappointment.

---

The combiner teams look about as well as I expected them to be. Still, a mark up from the FOC Combaticons, though that probably isn't saying much. The proportions are better, at least with Superion. Not so much with Menasor.

The Aerialbots look alright, I guess. The deluxes seem a bit simplistic, don't they? Dig Skydive and Air Raid, though. And Silverbolt isn't too bad, but nothing to write home about.

Though the lone helicopter in the team of jets is kind of throwing my OCD for a loop. Getting a strong Blades vibe from this so-called Slingshot/Alpha Bravo fellow.

The Stunticons, though... eeeeeehhhh, I don't know. Blackjack's pretty nifty, and his reveal seems to be getting the most attention from the fandom -- which is flippin' hilarious, as he's the smallest, most simplistic of the set!

Though the lone helicopter in the team of jets is kind of throwing my OCD for a loop. Getting a strong Blades vibe from this so-called Slingshot/Alpha Bravo fellow.

Yeah, they seem to have set up well for the repaints later. Hell, the front end of that helicopter mode makes me think space shuttle, so they could be heavily retooling the back end to get Blast Off from it.

Of course, since we're getting Prime out of the Motormaster mold, seems like we'll get the other Stunticons done up as Jazz, Sideswipe, Mirage and Windcharger.

Personally if they want to go all Scramble City again I'm totally cool with that. I never had a super attachment to Superion or Menasor so I wasn't about to shell out for the 3rd party versions, and these will do nicely for the most part.

I am a little sad about the Protectobots though. It is nice, however, to see them getting a little love. Maybe this is a warm-up for next year's Combiner Wars and we'll see a proper combiner Defensor?

You know what? All the lukewarm-looking Aerialbots and Stunticons and whatever? And the Slingshots and Wildriders getting different alternate modes? All that are totally worth it for this.

EDIT: I saw the pictures for Blackjack. It's actually quite wonderful! I expected something that's not quite a good a homage, but I do find it extremely awesome that Blackjack is more faithful to his G1 counterpart than a third of the Stunticons and Aerialbots.

Not bad on any of these, IMO. I don't know if I will buy any of them, but I like the thought behind it.

I had to do a double take on Superion. In the stock photos, he looks pretty cool and well put together. Whoever assembled him for the case photos for SDCC made him look like he's having some sort of lower back spasm, which coincidentally made me notice his incredibly wide and open crotch area with spindly thighs.

A few more thoughts, after looking at them more closely and seeing what other folks are saying...

"Slingshot" is pretty close to Vortex, isn't he? He's got the guy's cartoon model head, the same alt-mode, and big weapon pods on the sides of his helicopter. Hasbro planning ahead for an eventual Bruticus, perhaps?

"Wildrider" is very odd because he's neither got the right alt-mode or colours. People on other boards have pointed out that the mold (though not the colours) looks an awful lot like Ruckus of all people.

Regardless of who they're designed to be, it's easy to imagine those two redecoed (maybe with new heads) as Blades and First Aid, and one of the Stunticon cars turned into Streetwise. Then you're only two new molds away from a Defensor.

The inclusion of a sixth member of the teams in Legends form really opens up the field for what they can do, if they continue this gimmick and don't just finish out the line with a bunch of redecos of molds we've already seen. The Seacons already have the "gestalt uses one team member as a gun" thing down, a Legends-class chestplate would make a six-member Devastator work, and the same could be said for Monstructor.

The Aerialbots look really cool in robot mode (though it's a shame about Skydive's head), but their alt-modes are pretty awful. The arms are clearly visible in the stock photos. Stunticons are sort of the opposite, with cool cars but less-than-cool robots.

Taking a look more closely at them, here are my thoughts on each individual one:

Silverbolt: He's basically the original G1 toy with articulation, isn't he? He's even got the super-long gun down. Like Warcry said above the Aerialbots generally have better robot modes but have really kibbly jet modes. Not particularly interested -- one Silverbolt toy that transforms into a jet with a compact robot under it is enough for me.

Air Raid: is it me or has he changed his alternate mode from an F15 to... something else with swept-wings? The F14 Tomcat I think? Regardless I think he looks pretty nice.

Skydive: Skydive's lost those lightning bolts on his wings! NOOOO! I'll still get him because I really do like Skydive's character, but between the funny-looking head and the lack of lightning bolts he's really making it a hard sell.

Fireflight: He's kinda cool. Nothing to complain about.

Slingshot: Like Warcry said, he's basically Vortex -- I didn't even notice that he has a faceplate instead of a mouth. I'm not quite sure of this technique of swapping out every fifth member for something with potential redecoes in the future, but Slingshot is the Aerialbot I don't care about since he's a little shit, so yeah. Far more excited about potential Vortex, Blackout or Spinister redecoes this mold can spawn. That is an awesome looking gun, though.

Motormaster: Never really been a fan of Motormaster's original design, and this is a nice update. I need him so I can latch Blackjack onto him. The mold works a lot better as Motormaster than as Optimus Prime, and he does have a cool sword

Breakdown: Uh, yeah, he looks like Pat Lee drew his face. He looks kind of disappointing to be honest despite being initially excited by him. The white just looks unappealing. He comes with a sword because...?

Dead End: Do like Dead End's car mode! His robot mode looks extremely generic, though for whatever reason he seems to wield one of those exhaust pipes from a truck. And it's vaguely shaped like a nightstick. Maybe a future Streetwise retool? Just have him face the other way a la Sideswipe/Sunstreaker and you'll have it.

Dragstrip: Dragstrip is the prettiest of the four small Stunticons. Not much else to say.

"Wildrider": It's really, really weird. Other than being mainly black, he doesn't look like Wildrider. Wildrider is supposed to have red as a secondary colour instead of blue, and his alternate mode, while appropriate for Wildrider's personality of crashing through things, doesn't look anything like his original G1 altmode.

Maybe it's telling that he's not released as Wildrider, since IIRC it wasn't that long ago that we had a Wildrider as part of the Animated Botcon set. It could just be them using a planned mold for First Aid or someone down the road and later redeco Breakdown or Dead End into Wildrider...

I disagree with the Ruckus statement, between the alternate mode, the face and his role in MTMTE, he looks more like a potential Crankcase to me.

Blackjack: Blackjack loses his mouth, but is otherwise an immaculate update of the original Micromaster toy... and he gets a rather silly-looking axe to boot! It's a totally random choice even if it's one that makes sense to make the original roller car that came with Motormaster as a transformer... I'm not complaining, since we're getting a new Blackjack toy. Even if he's not named that, he still fits Blackjack so well that it can't be anything else except for him. Car mode's a bit disappointing.

RID toys in general we haven't seen the non-kiddified toys other than Bumblebee (and I don't need another one of him) so none that I want.

EDIT: And can I say how happy I am that the fists seem to be additional parts instead of stupid integrated not-hands like they tried to do with Fall of Cybertron Bruticus?

EDIT2: Link for RID trailer. Personally not a big fan of the aesthetic... it looks clunky, and doesn't have the realistic gritty feel that Prime has, nor does it look absurdly cartoonish enough to be Animated. Regrettably we see the return of stock footage transformations. Less regrettably are the return of Ground Bridges from Prime, and what appears to be a Golden Disk. Optimus Prime is like a ghost or something. There are new Skids-looking generics. Eh, I suppose I'll see if I like it when the show actually, you know, shows up.

Hmmm... I thought Hasbro may bring out a new Menasor for some reason. Now I'm thinking I should maybe track down the third party version...

Not super impressed by any of these - I actually prefer FOC Bruticus. At least his component robots had individuality. These updates take the G1 Scramble City homage too far in their generic styles, yet fail to actually do so for the characters themselves.

Of the lot, I like Motormaster's robot mode, but his truck mode is awful. As to the rest? Meh.

I still remain pretty excited by these. I'll be betting they wont show up in the UK though! Hooray!

I like that there's some liberties taken with alt modes and whatnot - slavish G1 homages are boring.

Menasor looks a bit weird though - tiny head, podgy torso and MASSIVE HANDS - which is a bit disappointing.

So far though - all good for me. I like fun toys. And these look like fun. Am expecting them to be tiny, less impressive in real life and with probably fewer paint apps etc than the photoshopping suggests.